Alkaid

How are you guys feeling about the Tempest Trials so far compared to our other big on/off event(Gauntlets)? I'm liking this a whole lot more, honestly.

Walhart's who I want to see most, and he feels like a likely choice for a GHB. I'll actually bother to make a cav team if I get put him on it. Aversa would be great too, though I don't know if they'd give us a tome flier for free (that's what I expect her to be, anyway).

It's super fortunate that she's a bonus character (and for the max 40% amount at that), since she's one of my core units and I'd have used her for this anyway. I don't even have a Nowi or Lucina, and my M Robins are all only 3*, so I really dodged a bullet there. Tharja saves the day once again!

Tharja is a god in this mode. I guess all blade tomes are really, but she's been my ace as well. Even though she's maxed on hero merit I keep using her anyway since she helps make things so much easier.

Same here. My main team for this (Tharja, Cordelia, S Camilla) is literally my core arena team + Sakura, and they've all been maxed for a while now. At least my Sakura's on her way to maxing out too with this.

I'm really happy with the masked Lucina reward. I could never get her even though I tried pretty hard the last banners she was on, and I'm not a whale so not being able to merge her beyond +1 really doesn't matter much to me. (I don't have a single merged unit as it is) I do still like regular Lucina, and I'm still tempted to roll for her on the Tempest banner, but I think I can resist this time and finally start to save some orbs up.

Got about 10k points yesterday with no stamina pots, and I'm at 17k already after this morning's stamina, so I might not need to blow them like I expected to hit max rewards as long as I can be patient. Had a hilariously bad moment today on one map. On the map with a ledge on each side (Henry's join map from Awakening) I accidentally moved my Cordelia to a spot I didn't mean to instead of attacking, so she was in range of an enemy Cordelia. The enemy Cordelia moved up, killed her, activated their Galeforce, moved over and killed my Tharja, then the Olivia who was on the other side of the ledge could reach her and danced, so she killed my Sakura too. All that was left was S Camilla who couldn't kill the Olivia or other red unit that was still alive so I had to surrender and get the next team. That might be the dumbest thing I've ever had happen in this game. Made me realize how the AI must feel against my own Cordelia.

Yeah I'll probably give that a shot. This is my punishment for still neglecting my Askr trio.

Shit, now I have to actually train up my Sharena so she can scratch Zephiel for a kill. She's still 2* so this is gonna take more stamina away from grinding Tempest than I'd like.

I agree having focus heroes for this is a bit lame. For the gauntlets it's kinda like, oh well, since at worst you miss out on some feathers for not being able to get quite as many points. But there's actually some important exclusive stuff here, plus all those juicy orbs. I'm blessed that Tharja's been a long-time core unit for me, so she's giving me the bonus essentially for free since I'd be using her anyway. Sounds like doing a first team surrender with a bonus unit works passably, at least.

I'm going for it. Hopefully I won't have to blow all my stamina potions trying.

I'd almost like to give it a go without a healer, or even just some secondary teams for fun to see how well I can do, but the stamina cost is just too steep to want to mess around with it.

The last one I saw had Def +3 as his A skill so he wasn't scary at all! Thank god for that. Just finished another deathless run and actually got an A in speed this time too. Pretty cool. Took a little bit of effort When Veronica moved awkwardly after I baited Reinhardt by breaking the wall in the bottom right, but it all worked out.

I can never one shot Veronica, but I've had a few deathless runs. If I can deal with the two cavs quick enough I'm usually freed up to have my Cordelia melee attack her and Tharja finish her off by the time she's getting too close to avoid her attack range. A lot of Reposition/Draw Back is really welcome too to try and pick off her support units and then move them out Veronica's own range as she creeps forward.

Norse mythology stuff is more common than I used to think. I was surprised how many Japanese games took from it. But nobody's stealing anything from anybody when they make Loki some trickster/shapeshifter bad guy, Yggdrasil a big tree, etc. If anything they're just being un-creative about it. Saying anyone is copying Loki, Odin, etc. is like saying somebody's ripping off Harry Potter for having the huge three-headed dog Cerberus as a monster when that's ripped from Greek mythology all over the place.

Wow, this is pretty fun. I'm proud of my first team pulling off the highest difficulty run with no deaths and not even taking that much damage. A in speed, A in survival, and 720 points. B Camilla, Tharja, Cordelia, and my 4* Sakura as a healer. Also odd that I tried the second hard map first as a test run, and I accidentally moved a unit forward on the last map without attacking and that got them killed, but I still got an A rank for that run in survival, and now I got A rank for no deaths. Guess 1 death might not impact it enough.

Wow, even more score for the Quickened Pulse seal than the 5* Lucina. That's pretty insane. Well, I shouldn't speak too soon, in case it's not as much of a mountain to climb to get that many points as it seems right now.

She's actually not bad, just needs a lot of SI help. Henry's tome, Triangle Adept, Swordbreaker, Red Tome Breaker and probably Moonbow. She'll shit on anything green and straight up wall them, plus hit whatever the breaker you chose lets her double like a truck. Plus she's really bulky for a mage, which is pretty cool. I think Close Counter fits her pretty nice too with that bulk, and even without TA she hits greens really hard.

Overall I'd say Cordelia is better since she gets a lot more wins on offense than Takumi. She shreds most of the game's cast with Life and Death 3 and a +atk nature. Even without +atk or +spd she still has a much better offensive game than Takumi does. She's really an offensive monster, but her downside is she's made of paper and has virtually no enemy phase. You can get around that with help from her teammates/positioning skills/a dancer to keep her out of harm's way after an attack, though. Takumi's not nearly as scary as he used to be early on, but he's still decent. Unlike Cordelia he can actually bait some stuff, but his res sucks so that doesn't include most mages, which happen to be the most common ranged units by far. If you have the teammates to help keep her covered, and she's not -atk or -spd, I'd go with Cordelia.

Oh okay, I feel dumb. I never go to the app store and I thought the game would automatically prompt for it like it does most of the time.

Wait, is the update already out? I didn't get anything yet.

Don't worry much about tiers. With enough skill inheritance almost anything will do pretty well. You don't need Azura, Hector and whatnot to clear arena consistantly or clear most of the other content. Even grand hero battles have been proven beatable with using nothing but 3* free units so there's always those strategies to fall back on too. If you just want a general team, I'd put 20k feathers into that Tharja as long as she's not -atk or -spd to fill the void of a good red unit in your 5* lineup.(Leo really shines in a cav team, while Tharja's much better in a non-themed team. It's really easy to get hone attack and/or hone speed on a teammate(s) to help her rip through stuff) You could make a decent flier team with Minerva, Cordelia, S Camilla and Palla. Inherit Caeda's flier skill onto one of them and either give S Camilla Gronnblade+ if you have a Nino in your 3* pool you can afford to rank up or just sacrifice your second Cecilia for Gronnraven+ to give to her. It will probably cost you a lot more feathers to get a full 5* flier team running really well, but you do have the bases for one if you wanted to. For a cav team you should really get Camus before he's gone and a team of Camus, Olwen, Cecilia and Leo will be pretty great. Inherit some cavalry buff skills from any Jagens an Gunters you have and they'll be pretty good to go. You can even rank up that Tharja and give her 5* tome to Leo if you wanted to go all in.(though you might want to keep her around anyway since you're lacking in good reds overall, and she's a bonus unit for the Tempest Trials coming tomorrow) I think a cav team is your best bet since you have the 3 prime mages for it and if you grab Camus he's a great defensive unit to go alongside them if he's 5* with his range 1-2 counter lance.

I haven't done it yet because I haven't been able to pull her even after all these months, but I will 5* myself a Beruka when I get one and BUILD THE WALL.

Honestly I hope that Masked Lucina is a bonus unit next season since Bride Cordelia kind of ate all my feathers so I have none for Camus right now.

Yeah I know they're not based on tier, but I was getting matched up with harder people before, to a very noticeable degree. I certainly do like these maps better (even though I'm running a very offensive team), but it's the strength of the enemy units themselves that I'm really noticing. Way less high merges and less top tier unit picks for some reason. I'm sure not complaining, but it just feels weird after last season and I expected to get matched up with more whales, not less.